The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell

Friday, May 05, 2006

Moussaoui Trial, the other perspective.

Im too cheap to be able to read the NYTimes article but i like the first line, The most important part about the Moussaoui trial is that it happened.This is an important factor that most americans dont want to think about. Most of the people that have been detained after 9/11 have not received any trial, many havent even been accused of a crime. This was once a nation ruled by laws. Imagine if China just started detaining Americans for a few years so they could check and make sure they had never commited a crime. Their justification could go something like this, although justification doesnt matter if its illegal.You know the stats that show that more Americans are in jail by percentage than any other nation so there must be a lot of criminal americans, were just goin to detain them at random and check their backgrounds to see if they have ever broken a law. I hope the US doesnt care but were going to do it either way. Then they have the audacity to say well we finally had trials for a couple of them after four years and we realized that many of them weren't criminals so were just not going to have anymore trials, oh and those who were found innocent yeah that doesnt mean they get to leave that just means that yeah arent arrested or guilty while they are in jail, so maybe we'll stop torturing them. Eh, nah we'll probably still torture them just not as often. Of course this is not quite what is going on because this would turn into a struggle between two superpowers. Im fairly sure that even Bush is not insane enough to attack China, and China wont attack us. This is the stark contrast between my alternate scenario and what is really going on, if China did this to Americans there would be problems, if we do it to Islamics who we are already attacking then there isnt much their government is going to do about it. And yet somehow by shitting on an entire race of people somehow this is going to make the world safer, because obviously if you really really piss people off then they are less likely to retaliate. Er wait hey theres a flaw in that logic isnt there....